Lina Bryans’s painting The Babe is Wise captures the ‘insouciant chic’ of the New Woman in 1940: independent and self-assured, the subject stares at the viewer from beneath a sharply angled hat. A portrait of the artist’s close friend, author Jean Campbell (whose novel inspired the painting’s title), The Babe is Wise became Bryans’s most famous painting, and its subject captures the artist’s own attitude to life.

Gillian Forwood’s handsome new book, Lina Bryans: Rare Modern 1909–2000, recalls the life and work of a brave, unconventional and generous woman who single-mindedly pursued a career as an artist from the late 1930s until her death three years ago. This lavish Miegunyah Press publication serves both author and artist well, reproducing numerous images in colour, many for the first time.